


His world is in his words

by chan_bi



Category: Justified
Genre: Epistolary, Multi, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-27
Updated: 2015-06-28
Packaged: 2018-03-26 02:19:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 14,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3833347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chan_bi/pseuds/chan_bi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Raylan received the first letter, about a month after he told Boyd about Ava, he didn't know if he was more pleased or irritated</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I want to thank Daisy for her help in the writing thing and for her support, we studied math together when we were nineteen.  
> And I want to thank Eli for her beta work

Trumbull State Penitentiary, Kentucky  
01/09/2019

My dear friend,  
  
It is my hope that this letter will find you well and that your life in Florida proceeds as good as I remember you made intend during our encounter last month.    
  
Please, Raylan, don't consider me searching for your address like a mere and disrespectful invasion of your privacy; I can see why you might be offended by it and, if that was the case, I would understand your rage but, truth is, I'd be very pleased if you could set that wrath aside and consider this letter just for what it is: the pursuit of a lost man to contact his oldest friend in a moment of great spiritual need.  
  
I will nonetheless appreciate every moment of the time you'll spend reading, and I will try to briefly expose the thoughts that lead me to write to you while trying not to keep you away from your life for too long.  
  
As you well know this isn't the first time I get to spend some days hosted in a similar structure by the Great State of Kentucky, but the conflicts in my soul I see myself facing today don't have any resemblance with any experience in my past.  
During these last four years I've been trying. I pray every day God to give me a sense of purpose, and I try every waking hour to follow His path, helping through my preaching the other lost souls that, like myself, have wandered into this place after the life of sin that made them miserable.  
  
My flock is small by number but pure in the faith of the men who compose it; and until our encounter and the tragic discovery that has come with it, I felt, not happy, because, after all the horrid crimes I've committed and all the lives I've destroyed, not even this righteous path and the faith which He has chosen to fill my heart with can give me happiness, but peacefully satisfied.  
Now a new feeling of sadness pervades my mind to the point that not even the love of our Lord and Savior seems to be able to fulfill the emptiness that I feel in my spirit.  
  
Our encounter left me rather pensive, and since then I've often been wondering about Harlan, our home, the past that we have shared there and the future that neither for me nor for Ava can be envisaged anymore.  
  
Our town is Death and we didn't realize that in time.  
  
I am aware that I will never escape my fate, I will die incarcerated and I will never see again the world outside the walls of Trumbull penitentiary as a free man. From this point on, the only light I will ever see is the one that God still donates to me and enlightens my path with, in all His undeniable forgiving greatness.  
I have come to terms with this destiny a long time ago and I know I have no right to ask or wish for any of this to be different.  
I don't want to escape this place or my sentence anymore, I have come to believe that I somehow belong between these walls, but I do want to escape Harlan; the way you did, the way you managed to have your daughter doing and the way Ava doesn't have any more chances to do.  
You surely would recall when I affirmed that, other than you as an exception, the only way someone can really leave our hometown is to never have been born there, but I know that my spirit will not find any rest during the lonely, long years ahead of me in prison unless I try, at least, to follow your example, sealing Harlan in my past.  
I don't have much to lose anymore. I'm asking for the help of the only man I know who beat Harlan, who, once again and more than ever, happens to be the only friend I have left in this world.  
  
I loved Harlan but I feel that if I don't leave it behind, I will never find any kind of peace for my soul, a peace that maybe I don't deserve but that I need in order to help the sinful souls that look up at me, to lead them into the rightness of the Scriptures.  
There was a time when you trusted me implicitly, when we trusted each other instincts more than our own, all I had to do was say a word and you would have followed me anywhere, and so would have I, Raylan, I swear to God.  
We, together, side by side, against the darkness and Death.  
But those days are long gone and those boys don’t exist anymore, so all I can do is ask you not to see any obscure ulterior motive to reach out to you. I know I don’t have your faith in me any longer and I promise I won’t ever have the presumption of searching for that in you anymore.  
  
I've kept you reading long enough and I will not bother you further.  
I'll wait for a response but with the knowledge that I may never receive it. If that'll be the case I'll not condemn your choice as I can think of more than one motive which can lead you to decide against writing back to me. I know that what I'm asking you to do is a lot, Raylan, given our more recent history.

If this is a farewell, have a good life, Raylan Givens. 

Always your friend, 

Boyd Crowder.

 

 

Miami, Florida  
01/27/2019

Boyd,  
  
I've read your letter, that doesn't mean I understood it or your intentions. What are you asking me? You said you need my help, but you didn't explain what do you want me to do.  
But you understand this, do what you want with your flock but I won't answer another letter filled with spiritual bullshit.  
Cut it out and get to the point.  
  
Raylan


	2. Chapter 2

Trumbull State Penitentiary, Kentucky  
01/31/2019

 

Deputy US Marshal Raylan Givens,

Let me at once express to you the feeling of gratitude that inhabits my heart since having received your letter. Being able to read a response was all I'd been hoping for. The tone of your brief missive nevertheless suggests that alongside with my gratitude I have to present to you an apology. Please forgive me, Raylan, if my words have caused you trouble or if I wasn't capable of making my intentions sufficiently clear.  
I guarantee you, once again, that behind my requests there isn't any obscure or concealed motive.  
In my previous letter I have not been completely straightforward with you and I'm thankful to have the chance of trying to be now; unfortunately the only answer I can give to the question you asked me is that I don't know.

I don’t have the faintest idea about what kind of guidance you can give me, but I do have faith in you. Despite all the differences that separated us in the past this is hardly the first time I put my life in your hands, and ultimately I’ve never regretted such decision. It’s a trust that, at least for my part, has been wrinkled in different occasion during the more recent years, but is now in me exactly how it was all those years ago in the mine. 

Do you remember Aiden Clemens? 

At the time he was the only other miner working our shift who was as young as we were. He'd grown up in Harlan same as ourselves but as he wasn't the brightest or the tougher of kids I don't think I ever noticed him much before I had to dug coal by his side.  
My very first day in the mine he approached me to say that he had got that job only a month prior and after that brief time he already sensed that we should've stick together if we wanted to make it out of the hole.  
I remember agreeing with him out loud but thinking very differently. Those days I still wasn’t afraid of the mine, on the contrary I was fascinated. That deep darkness that everyday swallowed boys, growing them into men so fast that they wouldn’t be recognized by their own mamas from one day to the next, and killing them, slowly stripping them of their own souls, pieces by pieces.  
The feeling that originated from it was nearly endearing or at least that was my opinion during the first months. 

Then, of course, something happened that managed to change my mind.  
One day Aiden Clemens, who was working next to me, suddenly dropped his pike, stopped breathing and started shaking; his gaze went wild with his pupils so enlarged they covered his eyes almost entirely making them seem completely black. They had warned us, sometimes the darkness we had to blend ourselves into in the mine can be overwhelming, sometimes a man can be overcome by it or be so deeply submerged in it that he can't do anything but lie there and take it in.  
While I watched him, on the ground, struggling to breathe, I was captivated.  
I know in retrospect that probably all the veterans were moving and talking around us, figuring a way to call the foreman and finding a person with enough experience to take him out into the light, but then I didn’t notice anything. I could only see a man, right in front of me, breaking against the darkness, against the mine, against Harlan itself.  
And then I saw you. 

I don't believe I have to remind to you the kind of environment we grew up in.  
During school years I never held anybody in high esteem, neither classmates nor teachers. I’m more than sure I’ve graduated High school only because of who my daddy was. I’ve never tried to impress any of our faculty, and when I had to talk to them I made sure they didn’t understand a word I was saying. You did, though, despite my efforts. I could tell by all the knowing looks and smiles you addressed to me at the right times, even if most of the times you tried to hide them in frowns moments later; and they were a breath fresh air in a world of motionless and confused faces.  
Despite the undeniable connection that those glimpses were proving we didn’t actually come to know each other during our academic years; perhaps the unfortunate fact that our families weren’t in good terms is what prevented our initial liaison to bloom, but still I, mostly passively, kept track of you over the years.  
I watched you walk through the corridors with a black eye and chin up, I saw you beat the crap out of Dickie Bennet in a baseball match and I saw you fight one against five relinquishing yourself for a principle that maybe you didn’t even believe in, but you would have loved to.  
When my turn came to start working down the mine I found you already there with the others wretched folks of Harlan, and I remember thinking of you on my first day, as the one who wouldn’t break. 

Although, that distant day I saw how your eyes were hunted and far away as you were watching Aiden Clemens predicament. You started shaking similarly and then, seeing you engage that sort of discomfort didn’t fascinate me. 

You looked lost, but surprisingly I didn’t start to think less of you, instead I begun to fear the darkness too.

That was, I think, the first time, in all those years I had known you, that I saw you lose your control, which you always held, even in situations in which I would've lost it, and I have always thought of myself as a restrained person; and I now believe that was the reason of my hesitation.  
I saw in you a fear that I didn’t feel and I took in the wrongness of the situation, and finally understood why so many men couldn't have endured the place we were finding ourselves in. It was witnessing your experience of fright that I felt for the first time the terror rising in my heart and instantly I knew what was the only a way to stop it.  
I almost didn’t deem poor Aiden of throwing a glance at him as I walked past him to reach you. I hadn't established a course of action but I stopped right in front of you, looked into your eyes, which were still fixed on Aiden but couldn’t really focus on anything, and reach out to you.  
When my hand touched your shoulder you flinched, but just for a moment, then you leaned into the contact and your eyes were focused on mine.  
Until that moment I wasn't aware that that contact was exactly what I had been longing for, and I'm sure now that you needed it as much as I did. You nodded slightly, just once, I walked away, and only when I was a few feet away I finally heard you release the breath I think you had been holding for a while, but I didn’t look back once. 

As you well know, from that day on, I can’t say which one of us was following the other, but I'm certain I nevermore worked down that coal mine without you being in an arm reach from me. 

I don’t know what you can do to help me, Raylan, but that never stopped us from looking out for each other before.

Your friend, 

Boyd Crowder.

 

 

Miami, Florida  
02/05/2019

Boyd,  
If you think I'm gonna drive for more than a thousand miles to put a hand on your shoulder, you are going to be very disappointed  
Raylan

 

Trumbull State Penitentiary, Kentucky  
02/09/2019

You are an asshole, Raylan.  
Boyd Crowder

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll be honest, I'm anxious about writing from Raylan perspective, so I'm kind of delaying that part, did you notice that? (next chapter I'm going to try , I swear) I'm also afraid I'm going to lose Boyd's voice and just start being pompous and dull. Please warn me if that's the case.  
> Thanks for the kudos and comments


	3. Chapter 3

Miami, Florida  
02/15/2019  
Boyd,  
That, I am.  
So, what you are asking me is to talk to you, about what? The good old times? You know that’s not gonna happen.  
I may be finally at peace with it, or as much at peace as I can ever be, but you do know that’s not gonna happen.

But I guess, for now, I don’t have any reason to say no to this, whatever the hell this is, or maybe I have all the reasons in the world, considering the shit that happened four years ago, and I just kind of miss having to use the dictionary on a daily basis.

So, here’s a story I think you’d enjoy. 

I was transporting a prisoner to make a deal with the DA the other day, his name was Dean Gold, when I had this compelling urge to eat an ice cream.  
I pulled over and asked the man if he wanted some, because you know, I’m a gentleman, and he looked at me like I was crazy.  
But then he said:  
“ Yes, but only if we go to this place I know, not so far from here, ‘cause once you go there, believe me, no other ice cream will ever compete”.  
“Lead the way” I said, because I was obviously curious about the place at that point. 

And so I drive for about forty minutes, with him giving me directions, and we arrived in this little Ice cream shop called Pixley’s.  
I ordered a vanilla ice cream and he ordered a chocolate chips ice cream and we were about to eat, when this man entered in the shop; he looked familiar, but I really couldn’t place where I had saw him until he looked at us and his eyes opened wide.  
He was the accomplice of Dean Gold in the robbery he was incarcerated for, whom he was about to give up in the deal, giving us his location. I arrested him too, and brought them both to the office. I didn’t get to finish the ice cream, though.  
Dean Gold couldn’t get his deal and now he has to do fifteen years instead of five. I asked him why he brought me to Pixley’s if he knew it was a customary place of the other man and he said one day I would find that out. 

I came back to that place and I’m telling you, one bite of that ice cream is worth more than ten years in prison.  
Best one I had in years.  
I’m thinking of bringing one to poor Dean Gold one day, I’m kind of thinking about the logistics, I don’t want to bring a melted ice cream to the man who made me discover Pixley’s.

I hope this gives you some solace.  
Raylan

 

 

Trumbull State Penitentiary, Kentucky  
02/20/2019  
Raylan, 

Well, first of all I surely want to thank you for sharing with me the fascinating story you decided to write about in your last letter; it really was quite something and I certainly found it a very entertaining anecdote.

I'll most definitely give some thought to your logistic problem and I'll attempt to find a solution, because a fine gentleman, as your kind intentions concerning this convict demonstrate you are, couldn't possibly present a melted ice cream as a gift.

You've expressed with great clarity your position and a more than legitimate complaint about the haziness of my requests, and Raylan, I assure you that from this point on I'll guarantee you that my words will convey the nature of my intent in a much more specific and accurate way. 

After reading your letter and pondering the line of action undertaken by the detained you were moving, I talked to my flock and inquired about what their greater desires were, about what they wanted more than anything else in the world. 

I didn't obtain a great variety of answers, in fact the only responses I received included a longing for freedom, a merciful desire for redemption or the possibility to go back into their past and choose an entirely different path that could've never lead them to perform the wicked act that ultimately has conducted them to their current painful state of imprisonment.

I don’t wish for any of that. Or better, I obviously wish for all that but none of them is my major desire. 

When my daddy viciously assassinated all the men of my flock, on the hill, all those years ago, I was lost and I went looking for your guidance. On that occasion, as I'm sure you remember, the two of us, together, headed to Bulletville.  
The one thing I regret the most, the event I most greatly wish I could change, is not shooting him when I had the opportunity: I should have pulled the trigger right away, without wasting time. 

I should have killed him then, right there, right in front of you. I surely would have loved going to prison for that specific crime. 

You know what kind of man he was; he was neither good nor extraordinary. Although I didn’t loathe him growing up, not like you did with your daddy, I did hate him.  
The reasons I had those kind of feelings for him weren't, like you could think, the way he mistreated my mama or me or the way Bowman ended up being after having been raised in his household; even if, of course, I didn’t like those traits of him. No, the main motive of my hate and disdain was seeing how insignificant he was without him realizing it.

It was when I was still a boy, after only a few months since he had started appointing me with some minor tasks concerning his line of work, that I came to realize how ordinary and mediocre he and his framework were.  
I realized how Crowders, Bennets and their so-called empires are nothing, or were nothing, I suppose, seeing that Dickie and I are all that’s left, and two incarcerated middle-aged men are not that fit to run the delicate and peculiarly difficult businesses of our families.  
I, in a similar manner to you, didn’t want to be like my daddy.

On that occasion I promised to myself I would have continued to work as his employee until the eighteenth year of my life for my own education and adjustment, to get to know the business and the people involved with it and to learn how to understand them better, but then I would have stopped relying on him and started to be my own man. 

I believe I ain't telling you anything that you didn't know before, I remember talking to you about this subject one of those nights, when we were boys. 

I kept that promise; do you know that? It was my understanding that in a past that's not too distant you thought I didn’t.  
When the time I had set finished, I engaged in differentiated and not always successful activities: I started digging coal, I enlisted in the Army, I went to prison, I did the commandos’ con and I started my church in the name of Our Lord JC, but I never worked for him again. 

I know you don't often appreciate me saying things like this but there was a time when you and I, we aimed for the same end, and that was to elevate ourselves from the mediocrity of our surroundings.  
For the both of us the mine was the starting point, but, aside from the goal, our plans were actually, as I later abruptly came to acknowledge, very different in all the other, essential, points.  
You surely recall how we've already discussed this matter, all those years ago, and today we can look back at the course of our lives and see that we both accomplished, at least in a certain measure, what we set our minds to do when we were boys, the design we refined drinking together after our turn at the mine. 

Now you find yourself exactly where you wanted to be and I successfully managed to exploit Harlan and its people for my own profit for decades, even if I’m currently paying the price for it. I drained the life out of it, and in return Harlan did the same to me. 

But enough with the past.  
How is that gorgeous daughter of yours growing? I have the presumption of speculate about her being beautiful, given the parents.

I’ll be impatiently waiting for your response. Your letters, always so long, turgid and thoughtful, have kept me company during many dull and lonely days in this wretched place. 

Your oldest friend, 

Boyd Crowder

 

 

Miami, Florida  
02/27/2019

Boyd,  
Let’s get something straight, I don’t want you to talk about my daughter ever again, I don’t need to tell you why, end of discussion. 

Aren’t you the sarcastic one?  
I give you an extraordinary tale about friendship, mystery and ice cream and you complain about its length.  
That’s why I don’t feel the slightest remorse in saying: Boyd, you are so full of shit.

I remember you talking about how you didn’t want to become like Bo, didn’t want to fall for the lie of the kingpin of the hill, the Crowder name and empire of all of two counties. 

I can believe that you have never worked for Bo, when we where investigating your family, back when I had just returned to Kentucky.  
All your daddy’s crimes seemed to be connected with Bowman, not you, so I can give you that.  
But are you trying to make me believe you didn’t try to become the next big thing in Harlan after your daddy’s death?

Are you writing to me because you lie to everybody and yourself so much you don’t even know what is true anymore? You want me to what? Find it for you?  
You passed your youth promising yourself not to fall for the pretty lie of Harlan’s king, but to use that place for your own proposes, you didn’t work for Bo and used lowlifes to do whatever the hell you wanted. But when Bo fell and the Bennets were getting out, you step into their places and you may have understood what was what but you still fell for it and become one of them big men.  
Until it was about not working for the family it was easy to remember that the Harlan dream is a petty tale but when you see the throne so near and empty it becomes difficult, even for the clevers, didn’t it Boyd? 

Stop romanticize your decision to stay, you could have won against Harlan, without all the “we drained each other life” bullshit, if it wasn’t for your own greed. 

I think I have said enough, you have to admit, I wrote a lot this time, but if you are somehow still not convinced of that, I decided to give you a gift to fill your days, aren’t I the best?  
I’ll mail it with this letter, so I think you are going to have it in a day or two, seeing it’ll have to pass the security protocols.  
It’s a book, written by the man who once drove the car on the moon and one time spoke in our High School, landing a helicopter on the baseball diamond. “More Than Earthlings: An Astronaut's Thoughts for Christ-Centered Living” by James Irwin.  
And look, he’s a creationist just like you are alleging yourself being. 

You can give me my dollar whenever you feel inclined; I know they don’t pay you much in there.

Raylan

 

 

Trumbull State Penitentiary, Kentucky  
03/03/2019

Raylan Givens,

Why, thank you for your present, it was very thoughtful of you.

I won't nevertheless give the dollar we bet, because I insist to believe it wasn’t James Irwin whom we saw landing in our school ground but Alan Shepard, the one who played golf. I apologize if I momentarily forgot his name but, you understand, with all the other events occurring my mind was otherwise occupied. 

There are many inspirational opinions in the book you so graciously gifted me with. The author found the light of God like I did but in a very different way: while I had to go through pain and suffering, he was blessed with a vision so magnificent, breathtaking and meaningful that, as he understood, only the will of God could have designed.  
I know that you tend to be irritated by the expression of my faith so I'll drop this topic pronto, and change the subject. 

You want to talk about lies we tell ourselves? What about the one you repeated to yourself over and over in order to leave all those years ago? 

You’ve convinced yourself that there wasn't anything important around you in your hometown, that your entire surrounding was a cage trying to keep you from fully living your life. How many times during the twenty years you stayed away you reminisced the past and see all of us only that way?  
Hate wasn't the only thing present in Harlan when you left, so in order to run, you had to accept to leave behind people and things you loved. But how can a boy do that?  
So you told yourself that your mama chose her own life and there wasn't much you could do for her, you told yourself that your aunt Helen was a strong woman who could never lose against Harlan and its tricks.  
And the two of us, we were colleagues, weren’t we? We worked together, and we looked out for each other down the hole and that was it; isn’t that right, Raylan? 

I’ll stop lying right after you do. 

Your working buddy, 

Boyd Crowder 

Ps: Are you going to stop writing to me now, Raylan?  
It’s all fun and games exchanging letters with me when I talk Scriptures and you talk ice creams, but are you going to run away from who you left behind again, now that the things are starting to get unpleasant?  
Is that the outstanding growth of the Great Raylan Givens?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really don't know what I'm doing, sorry


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a really weird chapter, I don't know why it ended up this way, I apologize in advance

Miami, Florida  
03/10/2019

Hi Boyd,  
Yesterday I was at the beach enjoying the sun and the wind and the sea. You know what I love most about the sea?  
That sense of freedom that it transmits.  
How was your day?  
Raylan

 

 

Trumbull State Penitentiary, Kentucky  
03/17/2019

Well, now, Raylan, in my letter I merely wrote the thoughts that had came up to my mind, there is no need of all this bitter mockery; and if you'll allow my frankness I'm not at all surprised by your sudden decision to change the subject, but truth is I actually don't mind.  
I've known you long enough to take no offense by your distinctive discourtesy, and I feel in the contrary somehow relieved because of your decision not to suddenly cease this correspondence, of which I've grown very fond, even after the harsh words we've exchanged. 

This time I have to admit that some of your arguments managed to cut to my heart and instigated in me the recollection of mistakes and regrets of my past about which I would've very much preferred not to ponder; and the feelings that those memories arose were responsible for my bitter reaction. Don't get me wrong Raylan, my words are not an amendment of my last letter, I'm not saying that my previous assertions were incorrect and I don't regret speaking my mind.  
I think you will agree with me when I say that we are too deeply bonded not to speak frankly to one another, even when the intent is to hurt each other.  
I believe that reading my little invective has been good for you as much as writing it and hearing in my turn what you had to say about it has been for me. Moreover I want you to hear the completion of my reflection. 

We are what we are, Raylan. I've been, and I always will be seller of the Word of our Lord, of skin hate, of our land pride or simply a seller of illicit substances. 

Allow me to make at this point a detour from the main topic to clarify the fact that all I am hereby writing may entirely be a work of fiction, and you don’t have to consider it a confession, as an officer of the law. 

You're a composition of all the events and emotions that lead you to be who and where you are now. Even if some of the elements that compose your past seem not to belong to the same soul I can see and describe you as the one boy that beat up Dickie Bennet on a baseball match, that had been a suffering child, having Arlo as a daddy, and has become a man who's not afraid of high height, snakes or redhead women, but still fears the darkness of the mine. They concurrently form the Raylan Givens that helped me when I was lost and the Raylan Givens who shot me. 

You can’t tear off and forget part of a person, Raylan, you just can’t. I still wear my skin tattoos for this very reason: because I am the sum of my experiences, and so are you. I’m not asking you to tell me about them but just to admit them, acknowledge that they're what compose you. 

Think about it, Raylan. 

Boyd Crowder

 

 

Miami, Florida  
03/23/2019

Boyd,  
First I wasn’t sure, now I can state without any doubt that you do are repeating yourself. You already tried one time to make me look inside my soul, think about what I am and all that bullshit, in exchange for information about Arlo, if I recall correctly.  
I enjoyed it more when you were all reminiscent, and wrote about the oh-so-lovely times now gone.  
Goddamnit, Boyd, look at what you are making me say.  
Raylan

 

 

Trumbull State Penitentiary, Kentucky  
03/29/2019

Raylan,

If I find myself in need to repeat myself is because of this typical stubbornness of yours: you see, it is a challenging task, even for a man as persuasive as I believe I can be, to make you even think about doing what you set your mind to not do.  
I will not impose upon you that sort of inconvenience again, at present at least. 

Thanks to what, if you allow me, I will call a funny coincidence the other day I whiled away a few hours reading a novel which I remember we both read and enjoyed during our youth and it made me retrieve from my memory some particularly amusing recollections that we share. 

At the time we were working at the mine for some time and we had came to know each other rather well. It was a cold winter night, we were drinking from my daddy’s moonshine reserve, emptying two big jars which I managed to sneak out of my home's pantry, and walking on the roadside, bound to rapidly become completely drunk, because your old truck broke at least ten miles away from anything or anyone.

I was walking a few steps in front of you, screaming, more than quoting, a beautiful poem by Walt Whitman that I still know by heart: 

_“We two boys together clinging,_  
_One the other never leaving, ___  
_Up and down the roads going, North and South excursions making,_  
_Power enjoying, elbows stretching, fingers clutching,_  
_Arm'd and fearless, eating, drinking, sleeping, loving._  
_No law less than ourselves owning, sailing, soldiering, thieving, threatening,_  
_Misers, menials, priests alarming, air breathing, water drinking, on the turf or the sea-beach dancing,_  
_Cities wrenching, ease scorning, statutes mocking, feebleness chasing,_  
_Fulfilling our foray.”_

I can not recall precisely at which line I was when I stopped but I surely did not declaim the entire composition because at one point I realized I could not hear any more the sound of your footsteps which had until then accompanied my delivery. 

I turned around expecting to see you but you weren't there; instead, I found you standing a few steps behind me looking intensely at what seemed to me was an indefinite point in the woods. I looked in the same direction and I did catch a sight of what appeared to be the object of your sudden interest: a man, half-lying, reclining on a tree approximately twenty feet away from the road.  
We approached said tree up to standing next to the man who, not without difficulty, looked up at us, highlighting the not unpredicted fact that he was even drunker than we were, I would say shitfaced for want of a better word.  
The big blue backpack lying a few feet away and his clothing made him appear as a hitchhiker who had been travelling for a long time.  
I drunk the last drops left in the jar I was holding just as he started speaking. He said: “I am Gruparlante and Gruparlante means me, I’m travelling across the world to offer my gift to humankind: if you two boys will answer correctly three of my riddles, I will reveal three truths about your future”.  
Hereby I am clearly not reporting the exact words he used in reason of the long time that has gone by and the fact that he was not really pronouncing the words as much as he was slobbering them. 

Drunk as we were and amused by that accidental and bizarre encounter we agreed immediately and listened striving to understand his drowsy sentence as he started the first riddle muttering “When is a door not a door?” looking very satisfied with himself.  
My young and inebriated self could not bear the foolishness; I took a better grip at my empty jar and threw it towards him, if my memories are precise, deliberately missing him by a few feet, because that was an idiotic question and because that was, anyway, the answer. 

My lively reaction made him laugh as he begun the next one: “What walks on four legs in the morning, two legs...” and you interrupted him right away when, sighing, you complained “Please, please, at least the last one, be a good question and not this shit” while I seized your, not yet empty, jar from your hands, and took two long sips. 

I believe that by that time our attitude towards what he had just said was his gift to humankind was managing to irritate our interlocutor, who, with a displeased look in his eyes, tried at that point to stand up, a challenge that took him several minutes, until he was shakily on his feet. 

Still sustaining himself with one hand on the tree, he said:  
“Voiceless it cries,  
Wingless flutters,  
Toothless bites,  
Mouthless mutters”.

We stared at him speechless for a moment, incredulously amused, only to start laughing a moment later, and I don’t even remember which one of us said something about the irony of the situation: a completely wasted hitchhiker, alone in the woods in the middle of nowhere, barely being able to stand but having no problem quoting Tolkien by heart. 

You retrieved your jar from my hold and, still laughing, asked the guy for those three truths about our future that he had assured he would tell us, because why not. 

He gave you a very grave look and stated, with a firm voice he had not been endowed with in the last minutes “I will not, you didn’t actually answer any of my riddles”.  
Having said that, he fell forward, deadweight in the grass, and started snoring the next second. 

I occasionally wander back to that particular night, and meditate about a man who decided to roam through the world, with no predetermined destination or purpose, if not the one of talking to as many people as he could meet along the way, or bump into like he did with us, even without really saying anything at all.  
I have never had and by now never will have a similar or even just comparable experience.  
Did you?  
Have you ever undertaken a road for nothing other than the sake of the voyage, just going, not directed towards any destination and finally not to escape something? 

I hope you did. 

Boyd Crowder

 

 

Miami, Florida  
04/04/2019

Boyd,  
Damn it, sometimes I'm really glad I didn't shoot you that day, I would have missed the one person I know who can take a fuzzy memory altered by alcohol, concerning a random meeting with a drunk, clearly too far gone to make even the slightest of sense, and romanticize it into some kind of spiritual encounter that changed your view of the world forever. 

And you did fill the story with so much bullshit I can’t even start.

I’m pretty sure that you, nineteen, drunk off your ass, weren’t quoting Whitman in the middle of the woods, but more likely talking about one of Bowman’s games or another. Don’t get me wrong, I do appreciate the artistic touch it brings to the story, it was a lot more likeable than the philosophical crap you spit at the end. 

And you stick in some mistakes too, I remember perfectly that that day was the one you dared me to steal the moonshine from Bo instead of you.  
I can assure you that when I started running from your dog (what was its name? Bones? Beans? Benny? Something like that) that your daddy set loose to get me, the love for the journey wasn’t what I was thinking about.  
I was walking behind you that night because Banjo had bitten me on the leg and I was limping. I notice now I still have a scar, did you know that? 

Anyhow, it surely was an entertaining story to read.  
Raylan

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For who wants to know the riddles are  
> 1) When a door is not a door? When it's ajar  
> 2)What walks on four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon, and three legs in the evening? Humans is the answer of this really famous riddle, a baby crawling, a man and a old person with a crane  
> 3)“Voiceless it cries,  
> Wingless flutters,  
> Toothless bites,  
> Mouthless mutters”.  
> It's one of Gollum's riddles in The Hobbit and the answer is the wind


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for taking this long to update, finals are coming

Trumbull State Penitentiary, Kentucky  
05/01/2019

 

My dear friend,  
I apologize for the delay my response will come to you with.

My heart is filled with sorrow at the idea that you may have thought I would have never written to you again.  
It was nothing but an unfortunate and unpredictable event, upon which I had absolutely no control whatsoever, that kept me from responding. Unfortunately I have found myself to interpret the key role in a regrettable play that has been repeated too many times in this miserable place, being the victim of an heinous act of violence.

The reason I could not write to you sooner, Raylan, is that, a few weeks ago I have been shanked, three times in the abdomen and one through my right hand. I thought of course that you should not receive a letter coming from me but written by somebody else's hand, so I had to delay my response until my hand was functional again.  
It is my understanding that this tragic and violent action was intended to make clear that the people of the white supremacist movement are not quite happy with my person.  
Their motive is as obvious as improper: being a carrier of the word of our Lord as I am, I’ve come to love all the creatures of God with equal strength and intensity and to welcome in my congregation whoever is moved by the desire to redeem himself, black and white alike.  
Now, this matter should not be a source of trouble and violent disarray because even in this somber place a man of God can trust upon a certain protection; but what made them bitter in my regard and triggered those actions I have been subjected to, was my attitude towards and my repudiation of my past association with them and the distance between my current thoughts and their philosophies, in which I once believed.

I have been lying here in the prison’s hospital bed for the last three weeks already.  
I do not remember the first week: I was too intoxicated with painkillers. But the others have passed excruciatingly slowly. 

Having no other things to do with my time I spent several days reflecting about what options I got for what's left of my life; my aim being of course spreading the Word and manage to touch as many people as possible. I now believe my little flock of inmates is not enough; I am not doing everything I can for the enhancement and salvation of this world; even being as I am, stuck in between these prison walls, I feel like I could do more. 

During these four years I’ve been teaching my people the message of the scriptures, with my tales as vehicle. Now I understand it was not the most effective way to model their souls.  
If I want to beat this people, and I can now affirm without any doubt that I do want to beat them, Raylan, I have to make them understand, I have to crush their beliefs to the ground and rebuild them anew. 

I can not use the Word any more, that is an argument they have come to know how to work around; what I need to use are my past, my experiences and the ideals and beliefs that have come with them. 

I know the sort of men they are, I know their attitudes and thoughts for having been one of them once. I’ve been so many different people, maybe sharing the complexity of my life will serve my purpose. 

I think the best way to reach this goal is securing my story to written words, by writing a book about Harlan, and me, and you and Ava too, so her sacrifice will not be vain. 

Remembering Ava is what's more painful.  
She always said that she chose the life she was living, that I did not force any of her decisions and that she did not do anything she was not willing to, but I know better.  
I know she would have been willing to stand by my side till the very end, if, by then, I had still been the man she thought I was when we started our journey together.  
At the beginning, and then for quite a while, when she looked at me I made her see only what I wanted her to see and made sure she would never catch a glimpse beneath the surface, so when the time came and all the events that occurred made my mask slip off, she reacted the way you can remember.

I take responsibility for this. Maybe if I had let her see me before, the entire me, not the deceitful version of myself I was willing to show at the time, she would have chosen more wisely, and kicked me out. Or perhaps she would have joined me and loved me anyway, but with her eyes open and none of the painful misunderstandings that lead both of us to where we are now.  
I please myself thinking she could have loved me even then, and sometimes, lying at night in the dark of my cell, I harbor the selfish hope that the love I am sure she had felt for me was still filling part of her heart at the very end.  
I know I will never stop loving her. As I said before, I’ve been many different people and many different feelings have inhabited my soul, but I know some kind of things, some bonds I created, affections I held in my heart, will never leave me; Ava was one of them.

So I will write about her in my book to prevent the useless and grievous repetition of her mistakes and mine. Maybe we could have had everything if only we've had the strength to accept each other from the very beginning.  
As I said to you, we are the sum of our experiences, but I myself did not understand it completely at the time, not really. I thought then that accepting my past would be enough, now I know I have to relive it, too, through my book. 

I’m going to stop writing now, Raylan, because my hand is so very sore. I don’t think I'm anymore able to hold the pen up much longer, and I want to dispatch this letter today. I have been missing hearing from you. 

Your friend, 

Boyd Crowder 

P.S. By the way, my daddy’s dog was a female and her name was Sally. And the way you ran from her that day, keeping those jars in your hands, never let them break, even when she reached you and started biting your leg, in my eyes will always be your more heroic achievement.

 

Miami, Florida  
05/08/2019

Boyd, 

Why on earth do you always have to do shit like this? 

This is so typical of you.  
You set your mind on the idea that now you are a preacher, a kingpin, a writer, a Nazi, a miner with only good intentions at heart, a preacher again, an outlaw and you go through with it until you can't anymore because someone stabs you or someone shoots you or I shoot you or someone kills your flock. I don’t rightly know if this thing of yours makes me more angry, amused or sad.  
At the end it’s what you are, in the good or in the bad. 

I’ll try to reason with you, I don’t hold much hope on it but, fuck it, I’m curious about your logic here. 

Let’s say you can write a book about us, about me and Ava. And by the way why do you think you have any right to do that?  
If you want to write a book, go write a book, why do you always have to drag other people into your shit?  
But for now let’s say you can and let’s say I won’t use any of my resources as a Deputy US Marshall to stop you, an inmate of an US prison, because maybe, call me sentimental, but a little part of me has a strange regret about how I handled the situation the night Ava shot you. 

I don’t really see your brilliant plan here.  
You want to write a book to get back to some idiotic Nazi asshole, who won’t even read it? Of all your idiotic ideas, this could really be the craziest. Or maybe you are just getting bored preaching for your flock and this is the first excuse you came up with to start something new. 

I already admitted once I wasn’t completely right about you and Ava, I won’t do it twice. I’ll say this.  
I understand what you mean when you say she didn’t see what you were, all of what you were.  
I tried to warn her but she thought I meant that you were a bad man and a criminal and she didn’t listen. When she finally understood, it was too late, being so in it like she was, all she could do was try to get away, even if it would have hurt her. 

What I’m trying to say, God help me I don’t know why I’m even trying, is that, from where I saw it, she did loved you, even without knowing you, and she loved you when she figured it out, too, despite herself. 

Anyway.  
Raylan

 

 

Trumbull State Penitentiary, Kentucky  
05/14/2019

Raylan,

Let me report the events as I experienced them in the most objective way I can, so you can consider the full picture of what is occurring to me.

Like I believe I have already mentioned in our previous correspondence, my efforts are these days directed towards a renovation of myself that I'm trying to achieve through what I can learn from my past mistakes.  
Men of all sorts are following me and trusting my words and I do not hide anything about my past from any of them, even if speaking with honesty could mean losing some of them.

A couple of months ago, a young man with hunted eyes and a confederate flag tattoo came to seek me, asking for help, talking about the his regrets: things he had done and couldn’t get past, moved by ideals he had by then started to question.  
He approached me saying that he had heard about my past and the path I took after my most deplorable actions, and he felt that I was the one who could show him the way to self acceptance after all the sins that had stained his soul.  
I, of course, welcomed him with open arms, and urged all of my people to do the same.  
You see, Raylan, what we did and who we were are not facts of great importance anymore; in this moment and in this place we follow the teaching of Our Lord accepting anybody who comes to us wanting to be a part of our congregation. He sat with us and listened for a while; I obviously encouraged him to talk and share whatever he wanted, but he didn't want to do it. Instead he told me that before becoming more deeply involved in the spirit of our group he felt the need to confess to me his sins.  
As you know I am not a catholic and therefore I do not recognize the sanctity of that particular act, but, maybe obfuscated by candour and desire to do good, I could not deny to a tormented soul to listen to his confession and try to help, so we set a meeting in his cell to keep the conversation private from the rest of the flock. 

When I arrived there, I noticed he wasn’t alone: almost immediately two other men, their skin imprinted with Nazi tattoos and shanks in hands, approached me from behind.  
I barely had the time and the alertness to detect the weaker and punch him in the face, breaking his nose, and taking the opportunity to disarm him. It all happened very fast and the memories are still blurred in my mind but I believe that, at the very moment I took that shank from that man's hand, the other one stabbed me in the side using a toothbrush with a pointed end.  
The pain I felt during those terrible instants was wrenching and for a moment all I saw was black.  
The next thing I saw, when my vision came back, was the man I had just disarmed directing a punch towards my face; I let it collide and used the proximity to drive my shank into his eye.  
At that point I fell down, helpless and disarmed; I was stabbed two more times in the gut before I could use my hand to shield myself from the next one. The shank perforated my hand from side to side and there stayed.  
My aggressor, finding himself in lack of any other weapon, managed to kick my aching body only a handful of times before my people turned up and teared him away from me. And then the guards arrived.  
I have to admit that after all those injuries I passed out, but not before looking up to meet the eyes of the boy who had infiltrated my church, who I did not notice until then; he was stabbing his accomplice with the shank that had previously perforated his eye. 

Only a few days later, during my hospitalization, I came to know that the boy was killed that very day by his cellmate during lockdown because he wanted out after all that had happened. 

What I want you to understand, Raylan, is that I really liked that kid. Despite the background he was coming from he was sharp, taciturn and attentive.  
I am aware that probably he made sure to show this sort of attitude to gain my trust and take me off guard, but, strangely enough, that thought has only the effect of making me like his memory even more; in the end he really was in need of guidance, he just didn't know that at first. He had come to my church with the sole intent to lure me alone in his cell to kill me but by the time he made it happen he was already changing his mind. 

 

I really did liked him, though, despite all that, and I want to say that it is from men of his sort I want my book to be read by, because in the brief time I got to spend with him I realized he was the kind of man who, under the guidance of my leadership, will destroy their ignoble organization from the inside.  
Of this I am confident.  
I will now try to freeze this feud that is starting to be created, try to stop the shameful acts of violence that has begun to happen: the man I left with only one eye died in a few hours by the hand of who he considered a friend and one of the men of my flock has been tragically murdered last week. 

I am sure that if I can manage to turn this inflamed conflict into a cold war I could and I will win it, even using my book as a weapon. 

Nevertheless I won’t write anything without your green light, because I respect your need for privacy and I will not alter my story by cutting you out of it. 

I will although ask you, Raylan, one more time, to at least give some consideration to the idea of letting my story be written.

Just imagine what we could do. 

Boyd


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you like it

\- You have a collect call from. 

\- Boyd Crowder.

\- An inmate from Trumbull penitentiary, will you accept the charges?

*1 *

\- Well, hello Raylan.

\- Boyd, what? Why? Damn.

\- Raylan, are you there?

\- What? I am. Boyd. Why have you called?

\- Why wouldn't I? Is this a bad moment?

\- What? No but... I mean yes, bad as any. What are you doing?

\- I was thinking about calling in a moment I had almost the certainty that I wouldn't find you otherwise occupied, I thought now may be that moment. 

\- What time is it? How can you be so annoying? 

\- I believe it's around 8 am, Raylan, May the 19th if you want to know the date too, for whatever reason.

\- Yeah, okay, I know. What are you calling for? You have no religious crap to attend on Sundays?

\- Were you sleeping Raylan? You don't sound very awake. You have to understand, in here we have to wake up so very early and we do not have the opportunity of using the chapel until later in the morning.

\- Yes. I was sleeping. It's 8am and I'm not in prison. And I really don't care about your chapel. Why they let you use the phone this early?

\- I may have some ways to persuade the guards about luxuries of this kind, from time to time, you know how it goes.

\- I really don't want to know. Since you speak so freely I assume you used the same ways to keep this from being recorded or has your prison changed policy on phone calls?

\- Well of course Raylan, not all phone calls are listened to, it's a random process which ones are, that, like the major part of our government affairs, cannot absolutely be corrupted.  
But I am not calling to talk about the moral status of our government.

\- Yes, I would hope so.

\- I don't know if you have already received my latest letter

\- I have.  
How's your hand? I think it's better, it was three pages long.

\- Why, thank you for the concern, Raylan, I believe it's healing, it's better every day. Now, as I was saying in the last letter I sent you, after telling you about the event that made me become guest of the prison hospital for so many days, I asked you for a favor. I am not sure you will be willing to oblige and after I sent you that letter I thought that maybe there were more opportune ways to have a conversation of this kind.

-Yeah Boyd, you can write your book, all right? Can I go back to bed now?

\- I am so glad to hear this because I was thinking about it yesterday and I wandered back. Do you remember the first time I found myself arrested?

-The union fights…

-That’s right, Raylan. You and me fighting on the line with all the other miners against the corporations and the lawmen. Who would have thought we would end up like we did?

\- It seemed like you were waiting for something like that for all your life. Bragging and inciting, quivering from the excitement, you started talking and all those miners, big grown men, started listening to you, a skinny nineteen year old.

\- And you, as always, in the back, leaning on something, watching it all like you were better.

\- Pot and kettle, Boyd, you were there for your spotlight and nothing more.

\- I’m not denying anything, Raylan, I’m just saying, you were there as a mere spectator until the infiltrate company thugs started the fight, and the lawmen started to strike us. Then, you were one of us in every way. I ended that day with my first arrest and it was nothing but fortune that the same thing didn't occur to you.

\- I had a couple of broken ribs, though. 

\- Yes, you did, but the consequences of your actions were ephemeral. 

\- What are you saying? 

\- It was pure luck, nothing but chance, that made me end up in prison and made you walk away. Would you have had the opportunity to be a United State Marshal with an arrest on your file? 

\- Wasn’t only luck, Boyd, like you said, I didn’t have the idiocy of making myself a living target for the sheriff department and the thugs by stepping into the spotlight and inciting the mob. 

\- I wasn’t the only one arrested that day, Raylan, a lot of other miners, much less bold than me, had troubles. 

\- And besides, if I went to jail with you, who would have bailed us out? Bo? Don’t remember you two being so close back then. Arlo?

\- I don’t know, Raylan, but remembering myself at that time I don't believe that jail would have been so terrible in your company.

-You would have preferred that way? Not me bailing you out and not us doing what we did after that? Why don’t you put that story in that book of yours?

\- Raylan…

\- I’m serious, why not? Ain't it part of your experiences? Or you don’t remember that night? Why don’t you tell about you just out of jail and us going in that barn…

-Raylan Givens, I have to talk to sinners about the redemption of their immortal souls. Are you trying to lead us all to hell?

\- So it seems.

\- I’m trying to talk about something serious, Raylan.

\- Right, right.

\- We are starting something very important.

\- Sure! The book that will end the white supremacist movement.

\- Are you making fun of me, Raylan?

\- No, absolutely not. I would never dare.

\- Of course not, but now listen, the fortuity of the situation is a critical component of this all. We can't ignore the fact that the current specific circumstances are purely random.

\- So, let me get this straight.

\- Let’s hope not.

\- Boyd.

\- Raylan.

\- Let me understand this. What are you trying to say to your readers? That our positions could be reversed? Why would they care? 

\- It’s a book, Raylan, they care about it because I write about it. 

\- Right.

\- Now, as I was saying, that day at the mine, there wasn’t any doubt that we would have been on the same side if and when a struggle fight would have started. But my question is: how about now?

\- How about now what?

\- You know perfectly well what, Raylan. If something like that happens in one of your workdays, what would you do? Corporate thugs starting…

\- Boyd…

-The corporate thugs starting a fight among the miners, lawmen knowing exactly who is responsible for starting the violence but still attacking. Men taken from their homes, beaten…

\- I got it, Boyd, I know how things were, what do you want from me?

\- You are on the other side now, Raylan, what if your job requires it? What would you do?

\- Hey, between the two of us, I’m not the one who has worked for Black Pike, Boyd, besides the Marshal service has nothing to do with strikes and even if we did, and I were still working in Kentucky, Harlan union fights are over, miners lost.

\- You mean we lost, Raylan.

\- So I’ll ask you again, Boyd, what are we talking about?

\- We are talking about roots.

\- I thought you didn’t want to have anything to do with our roots anymore.

\- That still applies, but you understand, with a subject like this, my intentions to escape Harlan are rightly overshadowed by the topic itself. But the problem is that maybe you don’t understand.

\- And this discussion will help your cause against the Nazis how?

\- Are you trying to change the subject, Raylan? 

\- What makes you think something like that? I’m curious… and I care about your purpose. I mean, fighting Nazis with books about mining corporations, who wouldn’t want to be a part of that?

\- It’s called giving milieu, Raylan.

\- Oh sure, why didn’t I think about the milieu for the Nazis?

\- Do you really consider yourself funny?

-What? I’m hilarious.

\- Because you keep repeating the word Nazis you're hilarious?

\- Leave me alone, it’s 8 am on a Sunday; if you wanted some witty conversation you should have called in a couple hours, when I would have been awake.

-You can't blame the hour for the flatness of your puns, you've been awake for way too long for that, but I will call later next time.

\- That was not an invitation to call me again, Boyd.

\- It wasn’t?

\- It really wasn’t.

\- Then don’t pick up next time.

\- I strongly dislike you.

-Never liked you much neither, Raylan.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It took me forever to write this chapter, I don't even know why!
> 
> Funny anecdote that nobody asked for.  
> One night I couldn't sleep and when it was like 5 o'clock I gave up and decided to try to write instead. The next morning I didn't remember if it was a dream or if I really had started writing ( please remember I had like 3 hours of sleep) and when I opened the ff document I found only this sentence:
> 
> "a panda a kangaroo and a Nazi are walking down the street but the kangaroo jumps instead of walking and it’s the only one who isn’t run over by the truck."
> 
> My brain is weird.

Miami, Florida  
05/23/2019

Boyd, 

Of all the crusades you made yourself commander, I have to admit I could even endorse this one; that is, of course, if it happens that I choose to believe that what you are saying is the truth and not one of your act.  
I'm more inclined to believe the latter, for now, you know, scientific method, twenty five years of direct experience.

So, enlighten me, other than miners’ strikes and the ambivalence between crime and law in my life, what other topics did you choose, if you still want to leave the fun parts out?

Raylan

 

Trumbull State Penitentiary, Kentucky  
05/30/2019

Raylan, 

I did not say that I won't write about any of the fun parts; what I said is that there are certain particular events, stories which are better kept between ourselves, and on this subject I am sure you will agree with me, after you are done teasing me.  
I in fact believe that, despite your little show of casualness, you actually do not want any of our so called “fun stories” to come out of my pen; and it doesn’t take me to understand you enough to know that. 

But I’ll let your words slide, because I find it amusing to watch you try to beat me in faking insouciance, metaphorically watching. 

At this point you should just say what's really in your mind: you really want me to write it because you are curious about it, and there is no shame in admitting you’d enjoy it. I would encourage you to drop the act you have been playing but I know better than to give you the kind of suggestion that, out of all people, you’d never take from me, with good reason, I may frankly add. 

So, along with letting your expectations about my writing down and politely refusing your advice on the matter to write about, I neither will tell you what I do want the topics of my narrative to be.  
Nevertheless, I will, at least once some of it will be completed, let you read it before anyone else, not because you'll be eager to know anything, of course, but because you do not trust me a bit.

 

Boyd Crowder

 

 

 

-You have a collect ca…

*1*

\- Boyd, I appreciate you waiting for an adequate hour to call me this time.

\- Anything for my dear old friend, Raylan Givens.

\- Mhm, Right. Sure.

\- I’m serious.

\- I’m sure you are, Boyd. It’s a strange coincidence, I was about to start writing to you.

\- What were you going to write about?

\- You remember Dean Gold? The guy who screwed up his deal because he took me to eat an ice cream?

\- Yes, I believe I do. Did you bring him a consolation ice cream from that place, eventually?

\- Pixley’s, and no, I didn’t find a way.

\- That was lazy of you; the man won’t be able to taste an ice cream for…

\- Twelve to fifteen years, ten more than what his deal would have made him serve, he was sentenced two days ago.

\- …At least twelve years, and you couldn’t find a way to bring him one?

\- Hey, I have a job that doesn’t include the task of ice cream delivery guy of felons and lowlifes, and why am I justifying myself with you anyhow? 

\- I don’t rightly know, Raylan, why?

\- What I meant to say was: Dean Gold made enemies for himself that day.

\- The ice cream stand that lost you as a costumer when you switched to Pixley’s?

\- What make you think I’m not still buy from Stefano, too? I would never do that to my good friend Stefano!

\- Naturally.

\- As I was saying, he made enemies that day. His accomplice wasn’t happy about how the situation turned out to become. He received several threats from connections of this man stated in the same facility as Dean. His deal would have covered a transfer in a medium security penitentiary away from them but…

\- But the federal government succeeded in letting down yet another one of his tax-paying citizen…

\- Boyd, stop right there! First of all I really don't think Dean Gold is a tax paying kind of person, and second and most importantly: you have to stop saying shit like this!

\- I am only stating the fact that this poor man will waste the best years of his life in a prison cell because of the federal system; apparently the judge didn’t grant him of a reduction of his sentence even if they saw the evident desire of redemption coming from him. 

\- You don’t know he is going to waste the best years of his life, you don’t even know how old he is! 

\- Every year of a man can be the best of his life, Raylan.

\- My point was, he has a lot of enemies in the South Florida State Penitentiary and he received too many death threats, so the court decided to transfer him to the Trumbull State Penitentiary.

\- Then I will look forward to meeting him.

\- I don’t think he is the Jesus kind of guy, Boyd.

\- Everyone can become the Jesus kind of guy after spending enough time talking with me, Raylan.

\- Should I be worried?

\- No, you should not, Raylan, I would never do to you something as horrible as bringing you into the light of our Almighty Lord.

\- I perceive some kind of sarcasm in your voice. 

\- And obviously I would never joke about bringing a soul closer to the light of God.

\- Boyd, that is literally all you do these days. 

\- Well, Raylan, there is not much else to do these days, is there? 

\- And whose fault is that, Boyd?

\- It’s my fault that I’m bored?

\- It’s your fault you are in the situation you are, boredom come easily as a consequence of that.

\- Oh, and in your mind I would have been better off living an honest and respectable life like yours, Raylan?

\- No, no, I guess that would have been a completely different and maybe worst kind of prison for the great Boyd Crowder.

\- Now who is the one making sarcasm?

\- What can I say? You are a bad influence, convicted criminal and all…

\- I know I'm the biggest influence in your life, Raylan, but you should consider starting being your own man, and stopping doing what the older boys tell you to do.

\- You are younger than me, Boyd.

\- But I’m so much wiser, Raylan. 

\- Oh yeah, I forgot that, due to your poor life choices in this last, let’s say thirty years.

\- Can a man serve a life sentence in a maximum security prison without being taunt about it? One would think the sentence itself would be a banter enough without assholes like yourself…

\- Hey, you called me! You knew I’m an asshole when you did it. I still don’t think of you as a person full of wisdom, Boyd.

\- You should come at one of my meetings with the flock.

\- I said wisdom not bullshit. And no, I won’t. I’ve heard you preach enough for three lifetimes, Boyd, for every cause imaginable and then some, I won’t add some more of this kind of shit of yours if I can help it. 

\- Now you are hurting my feelings, Raylan.

\- And even more importantly, I have no inclination of driving for better part of a day only for a social call with Boyd Crowder.

\- And now you are just lying to yourself, it’s always enjoyable seeing that you can’t change that much. 

\- Goodbye, Boyd.

\- Raylan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter may be the last one, I'm not sure, but it' a possibility


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this is the final chapter. As you can see it's a little different form the others, I hope you'll enjoy it. Endings are hard!

Boyd’s hands hurt.  
He shifted on his seat, opening and closing them, trying to make the blood circulate even with the handcuffs still tight on his wrists. He couldn’t move them enough to relieve the pain but at least now he could feel all his fingers.  
He cursed under his breath; he surely wasn’t having the best of days. 

That morning, he was reading a book, “The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy” by Douglas Adams, when officer Cregger entered his cell and told him to collect his personal effects and say his goodbyes within fifteen minutes because he had been transferred and he'd have to be on a plane in less than three hours.  
Boyd knew enough on the matter of federal standard procedures about inmates transfers to know that, for security reasons, all questions about where the plane would took off or land couldn’t be answered, so he asked none. 

He collected his possessions, which were, aside from Raylan's letters, almost entirely books, and gave them to the officer, who assured him they would be sent to him ASAP.  
Soon after that, he left Trumbull Penitentiary to Lexington’s Blue Grass Airport. 

Now, five hours after they got on the plane and two after they took off, the plane he was sharing with no more than twenty other inmates was landing, even if he still didn’t know where.  
They waited another half hour after landing before the seven female inmates present on the plane were lead to get off, and the men shortly after. Boyd was starting to follow the group when a guard told him to stay put on the plane because he wouldn’t ride on the bus with the other inmates. So he waited till an officer arrived and escorted him out.

Outside it was hot, much hotter than Kentucky, and almost instantly a smile widened on his face. He didn’t have to look up to the figure in a cowboy hat that was standing, leaning on a Town car a couple of hundreds feet from him, to understand which state he was finding himself in. 

Still escorted by the officer, Boyd covered the distance between them and found Raylan with a smug smirk on his face.

“I can take him from here, thank you.” He said to the officer on Boyd's side who nodded and unlocked the handcuffs. 

A fit of pain went through Boyd's hands when finally the blood was actually able to circulate through them, but he did not pay much attention to that while he opened his arms exclaiming: “Raylan Givens! I should have known.”

“Boyd, I hope your flight went well.” Raylan said, while taking one of Boyd's wrist, still hovering in midair, with one hand and reaching his belt for his own handcuffs with the other.

“Why, yes, thank you, confortable like the US Government reserves only for its most luckiest citizen,” he replied while Raylan was busy re-handcuffing him, mercifully with his hands on front this time and surprisingly looser than before.

“I’m more concerned about you, what happened to your hat?”

“It took a bullet.” Raylan said casually, his hand still on Boyd’s wrist, looking at the pink scar on his right hand, frowning, with an unreadable expression on his face. 

“It must have been an hard blow for you.” 

Raylan looked up, the little smile returning on his lips. “It was worst for the other one.”

Boyd smiled real big. “I bet it was.” 

Raylan took him by the elbow and manhandled him into the back of the car, not too gently, while Boyd continued. “Now tell me, in what part of Florida are we currently located?”

Raylan shut the door and sat behind the wheel. 

“We are in Orlando, I’m taking you to South Florida State Penitentiary, near Miami. The Trumbull warden was somehow made aware of some harsh exchanges between your people and the White Supremacists resulting in death threats and was therefore heartily advised to transfer the boss of one of the two organizations in order to soothe the conflict. It appears that the same person this recommendation came from even reminded her that Florida's Penitentiaries are the ones with less Nazis in all the South of the US”.

Boyd listened to all Raylan little speech, slowly raising an eyebrow.  
When he finished he replied: “ I am so happy this person made me the favor of transferring me in the hotter and muggiest place in all US exactly at the beginning of summer. I’m sure the State Penitentiary has an excellent air conditioning system.”

From the rearview mirror Boyd noticed with satisfaction that Raylan at least had the decency of wincing for a second, before switching back to his asshole self and saying, with a smirk: “ You could always pray the Lord for a cool summer.”

“That reminds me, the Good Samaritan also took me away from my friends.”

“You don’t have friends, Boyd, you have followers and employees.”

“Still, they took me away from them.” Boyd didn’t care at all about the people he left in Kentucky, but he still wanted to make Raylan angry, just because, so he added: ”Well, I do have you, Raylan, you are neither my follower nor my employee. We are friends. Or maybe you are right we are mor…” 

“Ok, Boyd, we have at least three hours before us, I’m not asking you not to talk for all of them, I know better, I’m just asking you not to make me want to shoot you again, because I really don’t want to take your place in a muggy Florida Penitentiary on summer.”

Raylan turned the radio on.

 

 

A couple of hours later the radio was off and Raylan was listening to Boyd's lecture about the importance of sci-fi in modern literature from the back seat of the car. From the rearview mirror he could see him agitating his hands, still handcuffed, as if it was the most natural thing in the world to have to move them together, making his point. 

“You know,” he interrupted the stream of words, “when you’ll arrive in prison, you could start a book club, instead of founding yet another church, just a suggestion.” 

Boyd smiled his thirty-two teeth, five-hundred-watt smile; he stretched, first putting his hands above his head then interlocking his fingers behind it.  
The nonchalance of the gesture irritated him for some reason, and he worked his jaw while Boyd responded: “What makes you think there isn’t one already? Or that I hadn’t one already in Trumbull? Book clubs are hobbies; we have time for leisure activities in prison but not much. Being a preacher is considered work and as such it requires a large part of my time.” 

“You are telling me that you don’t do the mandatory hours of work all inmates have to do because you elected yourself a preacher?” 

“You need to have a flock to do so, it's not like anyone can simply elect himself a preacher; and I give a service to my fellow inmates, so the prison gives me, for that service, the meager salary that is reserved for us prisoners.” Boyd replied with self-righteous indignation. 

“Are you really complaining about the salary they give you for not doing anything but your little show every now and then?” 

“Being a spiritual guide for lost souls can be very difficult and time consuming, Raylan, but I wouldn’t expect you to understand.” 

“God, you are so full of shit!” Raylan was smiling and shaking his head incredulous. 

“I have to admit, I have more free time than the average of people serving alongside me and I can gratefully employ that time in reading and in writing my book.” Boyd had even the nerves to sound serious but, stealing a look from the mirror, Raylan saw he was staring right at him with a grin like he had a secret.  
Raylan let himself play, adding: “Or starting book clubs.” 

“Or, indeed, starting book clubs.” Boyd confirmed, as Raylan parked the car.  
It took Boyd a couple of seconds to realize what was happening, seeing that obviously they weren’t anywhere near a prison. 

Raylan gave himself the satisfaction of watching the moment of astonishment on Boyd's face that he expected but didn't see at the airport, when for some reason Boyd had seemed more pleased than surprised, as he looked out of the window and understood where they were. 

He got out the car and opened Boyd’s door, finding him laughing. 

“Pixley’s? You took me to Pixley’s?”

“What? You don’t want an ice cream? I can take you directly to prison if you wish.” He mockingly started to close the door but stopped when Boyd put a foot in the way. 

“That is not what I was saying at all, I was merely thinking about poor Dean Gold, why did you bring me here and not him?” 

Raylan knew he was trying to fish for something, most likely to irritate him; Boyd was kind of a renowned expert in that particular sector, pushing buttons, specifically Raylan’s. 

But this time he had nothing on him so Raylan grinned while saying: “What makes you think I didn’t? His plane took off from Orlando shortly before yours landed, I took him here for lunch, I’m nothing but impartial.” 

“Of course you are! How could I have ever thought otherwise?” 

The bastard was still smiling like he knew better, God he hated when he acted like that, which was almost every time that they were in the same room together.  
He told Boyd to stay ahead of him, that way he could kick a few times at his heel and then he felt better. 

As they entered the shop Raylan gestured Boyd to sit down, at the farthest table from the exit, then he approached the counter.  
He ordered for the both of them classic vanilla ice creams, making small talk with Donna, a teen who had been working there for a few months and, even if she wasn't there when he had brought Dean Gold, kept doing her work without battling an eye seeing Raylan entering the shop with a handcuffed man in a orange prison jumpsuit. 

While waiting for his order, leaning on the counter and conversing distractedly, he kept an eye on Boyd; the man was at the table, sitting straight but relaxed, his eyes wandering out of the window.

He took the two cones, smiling his thanks to Donna and leaving a good tip on the counter, then nodded to the door and Boyd stood up and followed him out. 

“I was wondering, Raylan,” Boyd said as he took one of the cones, “do you think the deal ‘an ice cream for ten years of jail’ can work backwards? If I decide to decline tasting this ice cream, will a judge be prone to lighten my sentence of ten years?”

“I don’t think so, Boyd, but I can tell you, you’d miss something spectacular and moreover I really think life minus ten years is still life, or at least fifty years. Now I know you think of yourself like some kind of Messiah but…”

“I’ll stop you right here before the end of the blasphemy, all right?” Boyd interrupted, amused and not at all bothered by Raylan’s words. Then both started eating their cones, leaning side by side on the car. 

Raylan looked sideway to glimpse at Boyd's expression as he took the first bite. He seemed pleased.  
Obviously, he reminded himself, the man hadn’t had an ice cream in more than four years! 

“I am obviously enjoying this, Raylan, I don’t want you to think I’m not grateful, but, truth to be told, vanilla ice cream is not what I feel more the loss of.”

Luckily, Raylan had stopped being annoyed by the fact that Boyd had always seemed to know exactly what he was thinking, a long time ago. He really wanted to just enjoy his cone.

“Oh, yeah? And pray tell, what do you miss more than ice cream?”

"Well I wouldn't say no to a glass of good bourbon but I don’t think they sell it at your precious Pixley’s so…”

Even if later Raylan would have loved to be able to say otherwise, the kiss didn’t start from Boyd; but can you really expect from a man to wait for Boyd Crowder to stop talking?

 

 

 

_**TWO YEARS LATER** _

 

Elle Locke was shopping at the mall with her son. Summer was ending and Zachariah would soon have needed new warmer clothes, he had grown too much to re-use the ones from last year.  
Obviously the boy wasn’t happy about the way he had to spend his afternoon but she had bribed him with the promise of dropping by the bookshop and buying him a few new books. 

When they entered the bookshop Zachariah was already running towards the kids' section, excited about finally going in a shop he liked. 

Six years old and he already had a passion for reading. She tried not to think about the man her son reminded her of; the man whose name she surely hadn't just read on the hardcover of a book on the shelf she was passing by.  
Except that she did. 

Elle turned around to pick up the book of which she had obviously misread the author, because it wasn’t possible that that was really a book written by Boyd Crowder.  
Except that it was.

She stood there, very still, watching the book in her hands like it was about to explode, which was kind of fitting, if you think about the author. 

After a minute of shock, her brain finally caught up. 

The book title was “The Ballad of Boyd Crowder” and she had to admit it was kind of catchy.  
By reading the back of the book she learned that Boyd had written an autobiography (‘of course he did’, she thought rolling her eyes) about his past and his present.  
It said that Boyd was currently living in a Penitentiary near Miami, being a model inmate and preaching to his fellow prisoners. 

Ava (she stopped referring to herself as Ava a long time ago, even in her mind, but what do you want? This was an extenuating circumstance) had started leafing casually through the pages when she read her name.

It was the acknowledgment page and it read: “To Ava, she will always live through me and, I hope, through this book.” 

‘God, could Boyd be any cheesier?’ She thought, smiling, while she saw Zachariah coming her way with the corner of her eye. 

“And to Raylan, my friend, who is always by my side even when he isn’t and who helped me with this book even though, if you ask him, he didn’t want it to be written.”

Ava found herself rolling her eyes, again, and laughing hard. 

“ ’Don’t worry Ava, I don’t intend to see Boyd ever again in my life’ he said! I wonder if he at least passed by his house after leaving here, pretending he even tried to stay away, before going to him… Your uncle is an idiot,” she said to Zachariah, who was watching her perplexed. Her tone was fond, though, as she put down the book and took her son's hand.

“Idiots, the both of them.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know if putting Ava at the end was the right choice but I love her so much, I couldn't leave her out!  
> Thanks for reading and the kudos and the comments and the support and everything!  
> This is it but as I said in a comment I enjoyed writing these two way too much to stop, so I'll try to write more of them, maybe even a sequel if I have the story (this time).  
> I accept and consider every kind of prompt (because I am desperate) so don't hesitate to contact me!  
> My tumblr is [ Lyl Van Dam ](http://lylvandam.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Peace

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and feedback are very appreciated


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